About me

Thesis

Title: Voices of outrage: online partisan media, user-generated news commentary, and the contested boundaries of American conservatism during the 2016 US presidential election (2021). Read here.

Supervisors: Dr Nick Anstead and Professor Nick Couldry

Biography and Research

Dr Anthony Kelly is a Government of Ireland Fellow in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin (UCD).

Anthony holds a PhD in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), awarded in 2021. His doctoral research, supported by a National University of Ireland (NUI) Travelling Studentship in Media and Communications, presented an examination of the discursive dimensions of affective polarisation in the context of the 2016 US presidential election. Through a focus on expressions of entitlement to dictate the partisan content of media, this research demonstrated how audiences can position their engagement with participatory media as a consumer act with political and economic significance.

Anthony’s postdoctoral research, funded by Research Ireland, moves beyond this prior work to theorise how the notion of audience antagonism resonates with scholarly treatments of digital labour, influencer media, and platform power. It builds on a comprehensive consideration of the existing literature on polarisation and partisanship, whilst integrating an engagement with emerging work on the nature and limits of platform power, the prevalence of forms of “dark” participation in online media, and the wider impacts of so-called “toxic” fan practices in social media spaces.

Prior to commencing his PhD, Anthony was an Assistant Lecturer in Anthropology at Maynooth University, where he designed and delivered seminar-based modules in digital anthropology, political media, and globalisation. More recently, he served as Digital Anthropologist at L’Atelier BNP Paribas, where he directed research on the social and cultural implications of emerging technologies. Anthony is currently a member of the UCD Centre for Digital Policy and Media Literacy Ireland. He is also a recent recipient of an NUI Grant for Early Career Academics.

Expertise Details

fan cultures; reactionary political influencers; user-generated media

Journal articles

Kelly, A. (2020). Recontextualising partisan outrage online: Analysing the public negotiation of Trump support among American conservatives in 2016. AI & Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01109-5.

Rantanen, T., & Kelly, A. (2020). Abnegation, accommodation and affirmation: Three discursive modes for the institutional construction of independence among national news agency executives in Europe. Journalism, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884919880060.

Kelly, A. (2013). Doing it Digitally: Methodological Tensions in Online Ethnography. Irish Journal of Anthropology, 16(1), 47-53.

Book chapters

Rantanen, T., & Kelly, A. (2021). The digital transformation of international and national news agencies: Challenges facing AFP, AP, and TASS. In D. V. Dimitrova (ed.), Global Journalism: Understanding World Media Systems. Rowman & Littlefield.

Online

LSE (2017) Remaking the right?

Reports

Rantanen, T., Jääskeläinen, A., Bhat, R., Stupart, R. & Kelly, A. (2019). The future of national news agencies in Europe: Executive summary. London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. https://doi.org/10.21953/lse.aeginold23jj.

Livingstone, S., Stoilova, M., & Kelly, A. (2016). Cyberbullying: incidence, trends and consequences. In United Nations, Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, Ending the torment: Tackling bullying from the schoolyard to cyberspace (pp. 115-122). New York, NY: United Nations.

Papers, Conferences, and Symposia

“Hybrid news media, networked publics, and the recontextualization of right-wing outrage online” at Rethinking Repetition in a Digital Age, University of Cambridge, 2019.

“The shape of things to come: hegemonic imaginaries, collective identities, and the strategic role(s) of apocalyptic imagery in the online political talk of the American radical right” at BRESTOLON network symposium 2019: Critical and Social Theory for a Future World, University of Bremen, 2019.

“Recontextualizing right-wing outrage in an era of post-television news participation” at BRESTOLON network symposium 2016: The meaning of mediatized social order and action, Stockholm, 2016.

“Talking Politics and Texting Selves: Linguistic Anthropological Reflections on the Regulation of Discourse and Identity in Digitally-Mediated Domains” at Erasmus Intensive Programme – Imagination: Translations – cultural, ethnographic, intermedia, Maynooth University, 2013.

“The Production of the Populist: On the Indeterminacy of Participant Roles in Political Mass Mediation” at Maynooth University Department of Anthropology Seminar, Maynooth University, 2012.

“‘This is getting a bit Gaydar, isn’t it?’: Tracing Trajectories of Ideology, Enregisterment, and Risk in an Online Social Network” at 111th American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting: Borders and Crossings, San Francisco, 2012.

“Producing Populist Politics: A Linguistic Anthropological Analysis of Glenn Beck” at 12th European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennial Conference: Uncertainty and Disquiet, University of Paris, Nanterre, 2012.

“Paranoid, Pedagogue, Demiurge, Demagogue: Blackboard Didactics, Visual Rhetorics, and the Performance of Evidence in the Works of Glenn Beck” at The Art of Anthropology, University of Ulster, Belfast, 2011.

“Speech Styles and the Queering of Cyberspace: Contesting Modes of Textual Enselfment in an Online Social Network” at Erasmus Intensive Programme: Relationality and the Principle of Diversity, University of Vienna, 2010.

“Mediascapes, Virtuality, and Neologic Creativity in US Political Discourse” at Irish Media Research Network Postgraduate Conference, Dublin City University, 2009.

“Design, Convergence, and the Limits of Social Network Sites” at Ethnography, Creativity, Design, Intel and Maynooth University, 2009.

“Trust Me, I’m a Social Network Profile” at Anthropological Crossings: Memory, Identity and Belonging in an Interconnected World, Queen’s University Belfast, 2009.

Kelly, A. (2024, October). “Oh, you mean… gay?”: Relational labour and the industrial articulation of hegemonic masculinity by Andrew Tate and his followers [Conference presentation]. AoIR2025: The 25th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.
Kelly, A. (2024, October). “Received this from a follower”: Ambivalent fannish positionalities and reactionary influencer online content [Conference presentation].Play, Polarisation, and Participation: Exploring Ambiguous Fannish Practices in Online Networks, Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
Kelly, A. (2024, October). Reactionary political influencers in the context of electoral politics: Scrutinising Andrew Tate, Libs of TikTok, and their social media audiences [Guest Lecture]. National Chengchi University, Taiwan.
Kelly, A. (2024, July). “That’s the brotherhood I want”: Andrew Tate, articulations ofcommunity, and the multilevel marketing of masculinities in the manosphere [Paper presentation]. International Conference on Social Media & Society, London College of Communication, United Kingdom.
Kelly, A. (2024, May). Media Frictions in the Influencer Ecosystem: Conceptualising the Role of Audience Antagonism in the Propagation of Reactionary Politics and Illiberal Publics [Paper presentation]. Media Frictions International Symposium, Jönköping University, Sweden.
Kelly, A. (2024, April). Under the Influence: Reactionary Articulations of Masculinity and Labour in the Manosphere [Guest Lecture]. UCD DeepLab Deep Thoughts Seminar Series, University College Dublin, Ireland.
Kelly, A. (2021, December). Keynote address. Fourth Annual Integrative Anthropology Conference: Transformations of the Field, University of Central Florida, United States.
Kelly, A. (2021, September). Public Policy Roundtable Discussion: Better Insights for Better Policies [Roundtable discussion]. Unleashing deeper insights into humanity: Innovating digital anthropology, UNESCO, France.
Kelly, A. (2019, June). Hybrid news media, networked publics, and the recontextualization of right-wing outrage online [Paper presentation]. Rethinking Repetition in a Digital Age, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Kelly, A. (2019, June). The shape of things to come: Hegemonic imaginaries, collective identities, and the strategic role(s) of apocalyptic imagery in the online political talk of the American radical right [Paper presentation]. Critical and Social Theory for a Future World, University of Bremen, Germany.
Kelly, A. (2016, May). Recontextualizing right-wing outrage in an era of post-television news participation [Paper presentation]. BRESTOLON network symposium 2016: The meaning of mediatized social order and action, Södertorn University, Sweden.

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Dr Anthony Kelly

PhD Alumni

Department of Media and Communications